


Paler Be They Than Daunting Death

by GunGun



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Bittersweet Ending, Gen, I'm Bad At Tagging, Introspection, Retroflective, Short One Shot, Sort Of Sweet If You Squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 05:42:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16152785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GunGun/pseuds/GunGun
Summary: Books were an unimaginably underrated thing sometimes, Haise felt. Phrases, allusions, alliterations; can mean so little— cannot be understood to someone who couldn't even remember their own name.Of course, that all changed when he met Arima.





	Paler Be They Than Daunting Death

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Franz Kafka, T.S. Eliot, Ishida Sui, and my own proclivity for angst at 1am. 
> 
> Three cheers for being overwhelmingly sad about fictional characters, or some other Fall Out Boy song, am I right? 
> 
> (Maybe, I'll write something happier for these two after this. Happy endings are underrated.) 
> 
> Enjoy!

_—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,_

_Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not_

_Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither_

_Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,_

_Looking into the heart of light, the silence._

_—The Burial Of The Dead, T.S. Eliot_

 

Coherence was something granted to him by Arima's frequent presences. He learned quickly, but there was still a time where Haise was incredibly inarticulate; only learned phrases of need. An identifier, a verb, a noun. I need food. I need books. I need Arima.

The books Arima brought bloomed in number as each visit waxed and waned. The corners of his room didn't look that dark any longer, piled high with books as they were. Instead of elementary phrases like "he was white" and "we look similar", Haise was able to express the perpetual cogitation that plagued his insomnia (in his wakefulness; his thoughts, his attention) that often gravitated around who this man was.

Simply;

 

_Arima was pale._

In melanin of the eyes, skin, and hair. In clothing. For a short while, Haise was sure they'd had matching hair, but perhaps he was trying to connect to the man in some way.

(He seemed washed out and faded. Tired in a way that didn't speak of his vigor, but his countenance; pale eyes already halfway to their end, hiding behind a metaphorical one-way glass, denouement spoiled by a second party. Maybe deep down, Haise felt the same stirrings of weariness.)

 

_Arima was kind._

He brought him books to increase the verbosity of his severely lacking language skills. He had taught him kanji before that. Had given him the characters to his name. Once he had placed a lukewarm hand on his shoulder. It was pleasant.

(Whether he was purposefully unkind or unintentionally cruel, Haise felt the sting in his heart all the same. He felt cared for sometimes; the books and the supervision (custody? responsibility? control?) over him were constant reminders of the constraint over his autonomy. You will do this. You will eat that. You will read this. You will stand up. An imprecation of a name that fizzled and spat like hot grease in the back of his mind that he was so wary of.)

 

_Arima was a puzzle._

The man was always stopping by to see him. Checking on him and making sure he hadn't hurt himself. Often when Haise thanked him, a latitude of emotions— that were as verbose as an impressionist painting was to him, that is; not at all— appeared between the smooth plains between his pale eyebrows. Haise did not yet have the words for what he saw.

(Perhaps that was the driving force of what perplexed Haise the most. You couldn't solve a puzzle with so many pieces missing or broken; therefore Arima wasn't one to be figured out. He was just there as he had always been. Someone to contemplate, to fixate on, to trust— however unsettling the warring dichotomy of unflinching credence and mendacious white lies felt beneath his sternum.)

 

_Arima was tall._

Nearly a head taller than himself. A breadth wider. He had bulk in places Haise did not, whose thin body left him tired more often than not. Arima told him not to worry, they'd bring his health up soon. He was a pale tower, in his dark cell. Filling the empty spaces with emptier smiles.

(Massive. The man was just bigger than him in every way. Haise had an instinctual feeling that he had beaten people larger than himself, but Arima had an air about him that spoke nothing of his physical stature. A sort of impetus birthed from a milieu that was full of tragedy and plight and sorrow.)

 

_Arima wore glasses._

Haise's vision had never been the best. The constantly common static around everything was just the way it had always been. His head hurt when he tried to read Takatsuki Sen and when he brought it up to Arima, there were glasses the next day. Ones rounder than Arima's oval frames. Haise knew the words for the shy disappointment he felt.

(A weakness. Finally— the dent, the imperfection, the Achilles heel— something the White Reaper lost to. Even he, who oft mirrored something like a god, was deficient; human.)

 

_Arima was strong._

That much was obvious. When he wasn't wearing his white, double-breasted coat, his button-up shirts were form fitting and his muscles were obvious. When he started training Haise, he found that he never won. If he did win, it's because Arima went easy on him. His kagune bowed under the understated force of his IXA.

(Ignoring the repetition of a platitude; he was terrifying. His strength unrestrained and tottering an apathetic line of not-quite-sadism and mercy. Haise could feel his own lifespan drain every moment when they trained; a pen, IXA, his fist— all stopped a millimeter in front of a vital organ. What did it mean when someone like Arima could best even a ghoul? It was Haise overthinking his moves while Arima was ten steps ahead by then, victorious. An unrequited chess game where his turn was sempiternal.)

 

_Arima was quiet._

Conversations were like whispering. If murmurs could be clear like glass, easily understood, or with the concise ring of a tuning fork; that's how he spoke. He never yelled at Haise; didn't need to. He used to read to him back in the beginning. His voice was perfect for that. His steps, similarly, made no sound. His presence was likewise. Such a towering man, a large presence, wrapped in a gossamer silence.

(Eerily without noise. Nothing he did was loud enough to bring attention to himself, in a strange way it felt familiar. Every movement Arima made projected the most unassuming air; no, this man could not kill you in a second. Unobtrusive. A white silence. Sometimes he appeared at Haise's elbow like a spirit, goosebumps prickling at his neck, stomach dropping to his knees. He could die as quick as it took him to suddenly want for coffee.)

 

_Arima was awkward._

Haise's thanks were met with what he now could identify as a sort of vague embarrassment. Like he did not know himself what he was feeling. Sometimes pity. Gifts were received in a strange manner; held with a Herculean brush of fingertips or a soft smile. There was no physical affection between them, such things were just absent. Simply never here nor there. Though Haise could admit to feeling affection or admiration towards the man. He was what his books oft described a father figure.

From his books, Haise learned what a secret was and that it was okay to keep things to himself if need be.

That was one of them.

(Reserved. To the point of being completely withdrawn from others. For all his grace, there was an ungainly aura beneath it he was privy to in the privacy of his office. Like Arima held the strings to his own marionette, tangled and useless around him. Private. Overwhelmingly so; Haise knew nothing personal of him besides their similar taste in literature. Unforthcoming. Haise attempted intimacy through conversation and it never succeeded. Undemonstrative. Haise was starved. A hand on the shoulder aside, the only times he was touched was when they trained and he hated himself for aching in the need of that physical indigence. Unsociable. Formal. Aloof. Detached. Remote. Unapproachable.

Like a father? Haise didn't even know what that was.

He had many secrets.)

 

_Arima was beautiful._

His features were solemn, but tranquil. A still pond decorated with lilies. Undisturbed snowfall on a wooded path. The trickle of white sand in an hourglass. If one could find beauty in despair; Haise could attribute his face to what some of the more poetic books liked to describe how one looked when they were deeply asleep; heartbeat stagnant.

Solemn. Tranquil. Still. Undisturbed.

Utterly unaffected by the perpetual turn of the world; his own axis steady and cognizant of its own self-organized peroration.

(It was one of those occurrences of nature, Haise supposed, for a creature of such pulchritude to be so proficient in its capacity for horror. Just as the meaning of the word and its harsh syllables clashed, Arima was much the same. A person who's features lent itself to a graceful magnificence, inside an unpleasant stuttering bricolage of sharp edges and unfinished books.)

 

Arima Kishou was many things.

 

Arima Kishou _was_.

 

Until he wasn't any longer.

 

 

(Sasaki Haise is.

 

Until Kaneki Ken continues to be.)

**Author's Note:**

> /nervous/ Do you get it? Do you see the changes in vernacular (in the parentheses) that indicate where Kaneki had always been? And how towards the end more and more of him bled through via verbiage? Hehehehe. 
> 
> I wanted to explore an interesting aspect that suddenly came to mind even after more than a years worth of not reading Tokyo Ghoul/:re; how Arima had to reeducate Haise/Kaneki in his reading. So in this, I depicted a reality where Haise had a more limited vocabulary than Kaneki did (due to just how different the amount of exposure the two had to prose-y literature) to exaggerate the juxtaposition between where Haise was generated and where Kaneki, eventually, arose— another goat egg born from the kitten-lamb chimaera. 
> 
> I don't know if that succeeded, but I hope you enjoy it all the same!!! It was certainly fun (sad) to write! 
> 
> (Also the relationship, whether platonic or otherwise, betwixt the White & Black Reaper and their coda always pulls at my heartstrings; a Tragic Overture, Opus 81.) ]
> 
> As an addendum; you can totally meet me at a Denny's parking lot at 3am to fight if you don't think Kaneki is, like, unintentionally pretentious w/how he speaks. He'd be throwin' around highfalutin vernacular about and everyone would just be like... Dude. You are not a garden so stop being so flowery. I love him.


End file.
